What you will find with this new online LDS Church resource are stories, activities and media that support the current year's Primary curriculum.  Also provided will be an excellent index for ideas on various gospel topics that can be used both in the home and for teaching Primary.  Best of all, these are approved resources for teaching in the LDS Church.  Teachers can be completely confident that they are teaching from Church approved material, which maintain the standard of teaching true doctrine.

Currently, along with my Stake Public Affair's council assignment, I team teach the 8-11 year old girls in Primary -- which I really enjoy!  So needless to say I'm very excited about this new resource as I really believe it is needed.  As much as I appreciate the current Primary manuals, it is nice to have additional, approved resources for consideration.

I'm very pleased that a great resource for teaching primary is now available by the Church.  A teacher may not always use these resources in the class, but perhaps even more important, or certainly as important, is helping teachers to understand the doctrine, in a simplified manner, themselves.  Not to offend anyone, but I've too often been surprised at how many times teachers in the Church don't have LDS doctrine down themselves -- but they think they do.  So this is a great tool to help ensure that teachers understand exactly what they should be teaching.  I for one, plan on checking these additional resources on the week that I teach primary, to make sure I'm teaching our precious children according to Church standards, doctrinally.

While I'm on the subject of teaching doctrinally sound Primary lessons -- and yes, besides treat training your children Primary teachers teach doctrine -- can I just share with you one of my pet peeves of mis-taught doctrine in the Church, that I hear frequently and at all levels…  it has to do with teaching the basic Plan of Salvation lesson.   Maybe I should ask you a question before we proceed...  And yes, this is a test. ; )

QUESTION:  How many plans for our Salvation were presented in the pre-existence?

Now, this is just my experience, but more times than I can count teachers, speakers, leaders, etc... have taught that there were more than one plan and that we had to choose which plan we would follow.  However, LDS doctrine teaches (meaning the scriptures) that there was only one plan presented, which was then opposed by Lucifer.  We each had to make a choice, but it was not between two different plans.  There was only one plan presented, Heavenly Father's, that would result in our Salvation.  Jesus Christ did not have a plan -- He desired to be obedient to His Father and offered Himself as the required sacrifice to bring to pass the Father's Plan of Salvation.  Lucifer did not have a plan for our Salvation, but opposed God's Plan by perpetuating alternatives that could never result in our Salvation.   Just as we do in mortality, in the preexistence our choice was to follow God or Lucifer.  And as in our first estate, progression continues for those who choose God's Plan...

LDS.org on the Plan of Salvation:

"Before we were born on the earth, we lived in the presence of our Heavenly Father as one of His spirit children. In this premortal existence, we attended a council with Heavenly Father's other spirit children. At that council, Heavenly Father presented His great plan of happiness (see Abraham 3:22–26). 

In harmony with the plan of happiness, the premortal Jesus Christ, the Firstborn Son of the Father in the spirit, covenanted to be the Savior (see Moses 4:2; Abraham 3:27). Those who followed Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were permitted to come to the earth to experience mortality and progress toward eternal life. Lucifer, another spirit son of God, rebelled against the plan and "sought to destroy the agency of man" (Moses 4:3). He became Satan, and he and his followers were cast out of heaven and denied the privileges of receiving a physical body and experiencing mortality (see Moses 4:4; Abraham 3:27–28)."

And this from an Apostle of the Lord...

Elder Neal A. Maxwell said that it is “extremely important to get straight what happened in that premortal council. It was not an unstructured meeting, nor was it a discussion between plans, nor an idea-producing session, as to how to formulate the plan for salvation and carry it out. Our Father’s plan was known , and the actual question put was whom the Father should send to carry out the plan”  Pearl of Great Price Student Manual

 This may seem a bit picky to some, but I think it's important to understand and teach the doctrines of the Church in their purest form -- straight from scripture or modern revelation.  But unless we take the time to really study the basic teachings of the Church it is easy to perpetuate seemingly small inconsistencies.  But in reality, even the very smallest of revealed truth is important and connects with other truths taught within the gospel.

I really hope that this new teaching resource, The Friend: Children’s Lesson Helps for parents and Primary teachers will be a blessing in the lives of children as they develop their own firm testimonies of the truthfulness of the restored gospel.

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tDMg
Kathryn Skaggs

Plan of Salvation, Plan of Redemption